Thursday, 19 November 2009

Hey folks,it's been a wee while,again.Hope you've all been well,having fun doing the things that you love with the people you love...

Sorry about the quality of pics,I can only think it's the swimming pools of coffee I consume on a daily basis that are making things so blurry!

Anyway,this is one of my turned,carved,burned & painted Kokeshi Dolls.She is a solid billet of Scottish Sycamore that was first roughly hewn from a 9 inch diameter log using my Gransfor Bruks Forest axe,the ends squared on the bandsaw then mounted on my engineers lathe to be turned to a cylinder.This allows a perfect cylinder to be achieved very quickly & accurately.The dome of her head was finished with skew chisel,gouge & sanded to 600grit,the base finished with only skew.

Once I had the basic shape I started work on the features with my 0.5mm 2H pencil.There is minimal carving,basically just enough to define the jawline & the sleeves of the Kimono,just under 2mm deep.I did this using all 5 of my Pfeil palm carving tools & my trusty Swann-Morton No.3 scalpel with a No.11 blade.

Once I had the carving complete it was onto the Pyrography.This is a technique that involves burning a design into a light coloured wood with what is essentially a soldering iron.Some of them can be a little more sophisticated with adjustable temperature but mine is essentially a tiny wee poker with changeable brass tips.Although I only created thin,uniform lines in this doll,in the right hands Pyrography can be used to great effect in creating shade,depth & form.I burned in the hair,eyes & pattern in the Kimono,if there's a line it's burned.

I used model makers enamel paint,matt for the hair & trim on the Kimono,gloss for the face & checks.There are still a few wee patches that need touching up but I've been wanting to post this for some time (I took the axe to the log over a year ago & although she only took about 25 accumulated hours to get to this point it seems a whole lot longer....).